Sunday, February 8, 2015

OUR VALENTINE GIFT TO YOU!

Valentine Day Activities

Linda: Our school and district encourage us to keep all holiday celebrations low-key. We make every attempt to work on academic skills using worksheets and activities with heart designs - many of which we have either made ourselves or purchased from other teachers.

Lisa: We use the last 30 minutes of the day for a small party with healthy treats sent in by the parents - no sugary candy. Really - on Valentine's Day there can be no chocolate candy! The children love to pass out Valentine cards to each other and in the past we have done a variety of methods for getting them to write their classmates' names on the envelopes:

♥We gave each child a list of the class's first names to take

home for addressing the envelopes. Guess what happened?

The parents wrote the names in cursive and no one could

read the envelopes when it came time to pass them out!

♥We set up one of our literacy stations for writing the

names on the envelopes, about 5 - 6 envelopes a day. Can

you guess what went wrong with this great idea? Lots of

things! Some children were absent too much; some

children still didn't finish; some mixed up their cards with

other children; and some children never brought in their

cards until the last day!

♥So now we have the children bring in their Valentine cards

without any names on the envelopes! We sit in a large

circle and two children at a time pass out a card to

everyone in the class. No more issues with name reading!

No more issues with missing cards! No more issues with

time constraints! Everyone's happy and everyone takes

home a big bundle of cards!

A fun freebie!

Our students love to play Roll-Read-Keep and ask to play it over and over! They take a die and a board with word cards and play with 2 - 4 friends.

They place the word cards face down, roll the die, and attempt to read the word in the corresponding space. If they can they get to keep the card.

There really aren't any losers because if someone doesn't know the word right away, the others shout it out!

We have the boards and word cards available as a freebie in our store at Teachers Pay Teachers. Download Roll - Read - Keep and get ready for some fun!